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What happened when an apprentice or young ‘living-in’ household worker fell ill, c. 1690–1820?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2025
Abstract
Apprenticeship was important from the late sixteenth century for training and maintaining the English workforce. Masters and mistresses were committed by the apprenticeship indenture to provide food, clothing, shelter and training. Reference was rarely made, however, to what happened should the apprentice fall ill. Much the same was true of contracts between an employer and the young person who was hired to live and work in their household. Both sides of the agreement accepted that responsibility for sickness was part of the employer’s or master’s wider obligations. For some household heads, this was an unwelcome undertaking and from the early eighteenth century it became more common for them to opt out of this role. The fall in the age of these young workers during the eighteenth century and the relaxation of the rules of apprenticeship seem to have encouraged this development. Severe outbreaks of smallpox occurring throughout the country, particularly until the 1770s, highlighted the wider problem of sickness. An examination of the experiences of individual children who fell ill in this period provides insight into the lives of young workers when at their most vulnerable and dependent.
French abstract
Depuis la fin du XVIe siècle, l’apprentissage était devenu indispensable à la formation et aux besoins de la main–d’œuvre anglaise. Par contrat d’apprentissage, maîtres et maîtresses s’engageaient à fournir gîte, couvert, vêture et formation. Il était rare cependant que référence y soit faite à ce qu’il adviendrait au cas où l’apprenti tomberait malade. Il en était de même pour les contrats liant employeur particulier et jeune domestique embauché pour vivre et travailler à domicile, fille ou garçon. De chaque côté, les parties considéraient qu’en cas de maladie l’employeur ou le maître avait l’obligation de soigner et que cela était inclus dans l’éventail de ses responsabilités. Pour certains chefs de ménage, cet engagement était malvenu et, dès le début du XVIIIe siècle, ils furent plus nombreux à se désengager clairement de toute responsabilité si leur employé rencontrait un problème de santé. Cela d’autant plus que l’âge moyen de ces jeunes travailleurs baissa considérablement avec le XVIIIe siècle. En même temps la législation touchant l’apprentissage s’est alors assouplie, ce qui semble avoir encouragé cette évolution. Par ailleurs, les sévères épidémies de variole qui frappèrent tout le pays, et cela jusque dans les années 1770, mirent en lumière la grande question de la maladie éventuelle de l’apprenti ou du domestique. Ici sont analysés des cas particuliers d’enfants tombés malades durant cette période, ce qui permet de mieux comprendre l’expérience de jeunes travailleurs, à un moment de leur vie où ils se trouvèrent extrêmement vulnérables et dépendants.
German abstract
Lehrverhältnisse waren ein wichtiger Faktor für die Ausbildung und Bestandserhaltung der englischen Erwerbsbevölkerung. Durch den Lehrvertrag verpflichteten sich Meister und Meisterinnen dazu, für Nahrung, Kleidung, Unterkunft und Ausbildung zu sorgen. Es wurde jedoch selten festgehalten, was passieren sollte, wenn ein Lehrling erkrankte, und dies gilt ebenso für Vereinbarungen zwischen einem Arbeitgeber und einem jungen Arbeiter, der in dessen Haushalt leben und arbeiten sollte. Beide Vertragspartner gingen davon aus, dass die Verantwortung im Krankheitsfall zu den Verpflichtungen des Arbeitgebers oder Meisters zählten. Für manche Haushaltsvorstände war dies eine unliebsame Angelegenheit, und vom frühen 18. Jahrhundert an wurde es zunehmend üblich, aus dieser Rolle auszusteigen, wobei diese Entwicklung offenbar dadurch begünstigt wurde, dass im Laufe des 18. Jahrhunderts das Eintrittsalter solcher jungen Arbeiter sank und die lehrvertraglichen Regeln immer lockerer gehandhabt wurden. Schwere Pockenausbrüche, die überall im Land auftraten, und zwar besonders bis in die 1770er Jahre, markierten das grundlegende Problem der Krankheit. Eine Untersuchung der Erfahrungen einzelner Kinder, die in diesem Zeitraum erkrankten, vermittelt Einblicke in die Lebenswelt junger Arbeiter, wenn sie am verletzlichsten und abhängigsten waren.
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References
Notes
1 John Beresford ed., The diary of a country parson, The Reverend James Woodforde, 1758–1802, passages selected and edited by John Beresford (Oxford, 1979), 22 May 1779, 154.
2 Amanda Vickery, The gentleman’s daughter: women’s lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, 1999), 154–6.
3 Margaret Pelling, ‘Child health as a social value in early modern England’, in Margaret Pelling, The common lot: sickness, medical occupations and the urban poor in early modern England (London, 1998), 105–6.
4 Ibid., 4.
5 See especially Peter Kirby, Child workers and industrial health in Britain, 1780–1850 (Woodbridge, 2013); Katrina Honeyman, Child workers in England, 1780–1820: parish apprentices and the making of the early industrial labour force (Farnham, 2007); Jane Humphries, Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revolution (Cambridge, 2010). For the particular health hazards of different occupations, see Mary Nejedly, The industrious child labourer: child labour and childhood in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1750–1900 (Hatfield, 2021), 139–49.
6 Kirby, Child workers and industrial health. For a discussion of the problems and inadequacies of sources but also the potential for this area of research, see 5–13, 161.
7 R. C. Richardson, House servants in early modern England (Manchester, 2010), 109–11.
8 Alysa Levene, Childcare, health and mortality at the London Foundling Hospital, 1741–1800 (Manchester, 2007); Helen Berry, Orphans of empire, the fate of London’s foundlings (Oxford, 2019).
9 Jane Humphries, ‘Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revolution’, Economic History Review 66, 2 (2013), 395–418 at 395. Humphries refers to her aims in Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revolution (Cambridge, 2010), where autobiographies are central to her study.
10 For a critical assessment of contemporary estimates, see Leonard Schwarz, ‘English servants and their employers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Economic History Review 52, 2 (1999), 236–56; Richardson, Household servants, 64–5.
11 Jane Humphries, ‘English apprenticeship: a neglected factor in the first industrial revolution’, in Paul A. David and Mark Thomas eds., The economic future in perspective (Oxford, 2003), 73–102 at 79–81.
12 Schwarz, ‘English servants’, 249, citing Cambridge Group data. The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, also known as Campop, has carried out an extensive study of the population of England from the Middle Ages until recent times.
13 Alysa Levene, ‘“Honesty, sobriety and diligence”: master-apprenticeship relations in eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century England’, Social History 33, 2 (2008), 183–200 at 184.
14 See the analysis of the social background of apprentices in Goldsmiths and other London Guilds in W. Chaffin, W. La Jean and Patrick Wallis, ‘Unmaking apprenticeship in early modern London: Goldsmith’s apprentices in the Lord Mayor’s court 1597–1720’, London Journal 48, 2 (2023), 99–121.
15 Malcolm Graham, Oxford city apprentices (Oxford, 1987), 28.
16 Ibid., 99.
17 Humphries, ‘English apprenticeship’, 94–5.
18 Levene, ‘“Honesty, sobriety and diligence”’, 187.
19 See, for example, Honeyman, Child workers, passim.
20 James Barry Bird, The laws respecting masters and servants (London, 1799), 69.
21 Male apprentices served to 24 years of age, females to 21 unless married. In 1768 the age for males was reduced to 21 years. Apprenticeship was intended to be unpaid, but it had become more common for male apprentices to be paid ‘wages’ in the later years of their term.
22 Christopher Brooks, Law, politics and society in early modern England (Cambridge, 2008), 375.
23 Emma Griffin, Liberty’s Dawn: A people’s history of the industrial revolution (New Haven, CT, 2014), 65–6.
24 Rushton, ‘The matter in variance: adolescents and domestic conflict in the pre-industrial economy of northeast England, 1600–1800’, Journal of Social History 25, 1 (1991), 89–107.
25 Gavin Hannah ed., The deserted village: the diary of an Oxfordshire Rector, James Newton of Newnham Courtenay, 1736–86 (Stroud, 1992), 23 June 1759, 38, 5 December 1759, 72 and passim.
26 Peter Rushton, ‘The matter in variance’, 89–107.
27 Mary Lindeman, ‘Health and science’, in Elizabeth Foyster and James Martin eds., A cultural history of childhood and family in the age of Enlightenment (London, 2014), 175.
28 Donald Woodward, ‘The background to the Statute of Artificers: the genesis of Labour policy, 1558–63’, Economic History Review 33, 1 (1980), 32–44.
29 A. L. Merson ed., A calendar of Southampton apprenticeship registers, 1609–1740 (Southampton, 1968), 17; Graham, Oxford apprentices, xxiii.
30 Pelling, ‘Child health as a social value’, 124.
31 Humphries, ‘English apprenticeship’, 82, 83, 95.
32 Tom David Spencer Marshall, ‘Apprenticeship in mid-eighteenth-century England’ (unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2013), 258.
33 Pelling, ‘English apprenticeship’, 83.
34 Thomas Sokoll, Essex pauper letters, 1731–1837 (Oxford, 2001).
35 Marshall, ‘Apprenticeship’.
36 In Southampton in the early seventeenth century, the obligation of the master to provide food, lodging and apparel was so widely accepted that it was generally expressed in brief standardized form on the indenture Merson, Southampton apprenticeship registers, xx.
37 See, for example, Joan Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 1600–1914 (London, 1996), 21–7.
38 Pelling, ‘Child health as a social value’, 12.
39 Graham, Oxford city apprentices, 57.
40 Christopher Brooks, Law, politics and society, 376.
41 Graham, Oxford city apprentices, 139–40.
42 Pelling, ‘Child health’, 127.
43 Rushton, ‘Matter in variance’, 94.
44 Patrick Wallis, Cliff Webb and Chris Minns, ‘Leaving home and entering service: the age of apprenticeship in early modern London’, Continuity and Change 25, 3 (2010), 1, 12.
45 Ibid., 13–14.
46 An important pioneer work is Richard Wall, ‘The age at leaving home’, Journal of Family History 3, 2 (1978), 181–202; Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, ‘The exploitation of little children: children’s work and the family economy in the British industrial revolution’, Explorations in Economic History 32, 4 (1995), 849–80; see also the discussion of research on age of apprenticeship and leaving home in Wallis et al., ‘Leaving home’, 22.
47 Joan Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 13.
48 Wallis et al.,’Leaving home’, 23.
49 Humphries, ‘Childhood and child labour’, 413.
50 Pelling, Common lot, 132, drawing on the work of Barbara Hanawalt.
51 Alysa Levene, ‘Parish apprenticeship and the old poor law in London’, Economic History Review 63, 4 (2010), 915–41 at 924.
52 Honeyman found a modal and median age of ten for factory apprentices sent from London parishes for much the same period, Honeyman, Child workers in England, 45–6. For discussion of controversy concerning age of apprenticeship and the beginning of work, see Humphries, Childhood and child labour, 2–3 and passim.
53 Levene, ‘Parish apprenticeship’, 923–4.
54 Bernard Mandeville, The fable of the bees, ed. P. Harth (Harmondsworth, 1970), 19, 294, 315.
55 See, for example, indenture for Christopher Browncker, 4 March 1752, A/FH/A/12/4/1/1.
56 Levene, Childcare health and mortality, 7–8.
57 For a detailed account of the decision to introduce an ‘open policy’ and its aftermath, see Ruth McClure, Coram’s children; the London Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century (New Haven, CT, 1981), 96–137.
58 Indenture, William Barrington, 5 April 1780 and for the other apprentices that year, see LMA, A/FH/A/12/004/083.
59 Indenture, Thomas Trott, 3 August 1802, and for the other boys see microfilm XO41/005A for 1802.
60 Indenture, Elizabeth North, 25 June 1777; Indenture, Martha Warden, 3 December 1777, LMA, A/FH/A/12/004/082.
61 Indenture, Grace Windsor, 12 May 1779, LMA, A/FH/A/12/004/083.
62 Jenifer Dyer, ‘Children in domestic service c. 1760–1830’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 2016), 202. During the General Reception (1756–1760), the Foundling Hospital took in all infants who were presented in return for financial aid from Parliament.
63 Humphries, ‘Childhood and child labour’, 410–11.
64 Ibid., 402, 404–6.
65 See especially Patrick Wallis et al., ‘Leaving home’, 1–32.
66 See the discussion in Pelling, ‘Apprenticeship, health and social cohesion’, History Workshop Journal 37, 1 (1994), 33–51.
67 Emma Griffin, Liberty’s dawn: a people’s history of the industrial revolution (New Haven, CT, 2014), 65–6.
68 Mary Anne Ashford, Life of a licensed victualler’s daughter, written by herself (London, 1844), 5.
69 Donald Woodward, ‘The background to the Statute of Artificers’, 32–44.
70 Chris Minns and Patrick Wallis, ‘Rules and reality: quantifying the practice of apprenticeship in early modern England’, Economic History Review 65, 2 (2012), 556–79 at 574.
71 Ibid., 570.
72 Pat Hudson and I. Lynette Hunter eds., ‘The autobiography of William Hart, cooper, 1779–1857: a respectable artisan in the industrial revolution’, London Journal 7, 2 (1981), 152–3.
73 Amanda Vickery considers the frequency with which servants, especially young ones, moved on. Elizabeth Shackleton in Lancashire, for example, an unexceptional employer for conditions and payment, saw ‘an overflowing river of unpredictable women servants pouring through the household’ in the 1770s, Vickery, Gentleman’s daughter, 136–9.
74 Christopher Brooks, ‘Apprenticeship, social mobility and the middling sort, 1550–1800’, in John Barry and Christopher Brooks eds., The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, 1994), 67–70.
75 Pelling, ‘Child health as a social value’, 124; in London, Pelling, ‘Apprenticeship, health and social cohesion’, 33–56.
76 Romola Jane Davenport, Max Satchell and Leigh Shaw-Taylor, ‘The geography of smallpox in England before vaccination: a conundrum resolved’, Social Science and Medicine 206 (2018), 75–85.
77 Ibid., 75–85.
78 Graham, Oxford city apprentices, 124.
79 See Rosemary Leadbeater’s study of smallpox outbreaks in Oxfordshire, 1718–1719 and 1731–1733, which indicates that smallpox mortality and infection rates in the 10–14 age group were particularly high, especially in the first outbreak, ‘Smallpox in Oxfordshire, 1700–99 and the implications of familial transmission routes’, Local Population Studies 98 (Spring, 2017), 12–29.
80 Christabel Dale ed., Wiltshire apprentices and their masters, 1710–1750 (Devises, 1961), ix–x.
81 L. G. Mitchell ed., The Purefoy letters, 1735–1753 (London, 1973), 310.
82 F. M. Cowe ed., Wimbledon vestry minutes 1736, 1743–1788 (Guildford, 1964), 43.
83 Steven King, ‘“Stop this overwhelming torment of destiny”: negotiating financial aid in time of sickness under the English Old Poor Law, 1800–1840’, Bulletin of Medical History 79, 2 (2005), 228–60 at 228.
84 The House Bill of the most Honourable Marquis of Carnarvon, Huntington Library, ST389, Box 14, see details of costs 9 December 1762, 24 December 1762, 4 January 1763.
85 Peter Durrant ed., Berkshire overseers’ papers 1654–1834 (Reading, 1997), vol. 3, 175.
86 House Bill of Marquis of Carnarvon, Huntington Library, ST 389, Box 14. For details of expenditure for Robert Redford’s smallpox, see 29 November 1762 to 31 January 1763. Payment for boy in place of Redford 4 January 1763.
87 House Bill of Marquis of Carnarvon, Huntington Library, ST 389, Box 14, 5 July (possibly 25) 1763.
88 General Committee Minutes of the Foundling Hospital, 8 June 1743, cited in Alysa Levene, Childcare, health and mortality, 164. For discussion of the Foundling Hospital strategy on smallpox, see 163–5. However, Romola Davenport, Leonard Schwarz and Jeremy Bolton question the efficacy and reach of Foundling Hospital measures, ‘Urban inoculation and the decline of smallpox mortality in eighteenth-century cities’, Economic History Review 69, 1 (2016), 188–214, 212.
89 Levene, Childcare, health and mortality, 163, citing J. Landers, ‘Age patterns of mortality in London during the long eighteenth century: a test of the “High Potential” model of metropolitan mortality’, Social History of Medicine 3, 1 (1990), 52–5. Identification of the chief victims of smallpox has been refined in recent work. The long-standing debate on the impact of inoculation is complex, but there is little reason to doubt contemporary fear of smallpox and awareness of the vulnerability of young children. Davenport et al. agree that one motive for inoculation was to improve the children’s employment prospects, Davenport et al., ‘Urban inoculation and the decline of smallpox’, 212.
90 Gillian Clark ed., Correspondence of the Foundling Hospital inspectors in Berkshire, 1757–68, Berkshire Record Society 1 (1994), 228, citing Correspondence, LMA, A/FH/A/6/1/20/4/35, 16 October 1767.
91 Gavin Hannah ed., The diary of an Oxfordshire rector, James Newton 1736–1786 (Stroud, 1992), 6. The newspaper was Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 11 August 1759.
92 Folarin Shyllon, Black slaves in Britain (London, 1974), 6.
93 A surgeon in the 1740s charged 40s for each person he inoculated – not much less than the annual wage of young, live-in hired servants, John Bennett, ‘The inoculation of the poor against smallpox in eighteenth century England’, in Anne M. Scott ed., Experiences of poverty in late medieval and early modern England and France (Farnham, 2012), 206.
94 Ibid., 206–20 and passim. For example, the services offered by Robert Sutton.
95 Bennett, ‘Inoculation of the poor’, 214–15, citing Gentleman’s Magazine 20 (1750), 532.
96 Alysa Levene, The childhood of the poor (Basingstoke, 2012), 86–7.
97 Beresford, Diary of a country parson, 16 March 1791, 396, 7 March 1791, 395.
98 Ibid., 3 November 1776, 126, 186, 27 April 1785, 250.
99 Martyn Beardsley and Nicholas Bennett eds., Grateful to providence: the diary and accounts of Matthew Flinders, surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife, 1775–1802, vol. 1, Lincoln Record Society 97 (Woodbridge, 2007), 140.
100 Margaret Bird ed., The diary of Mary Hardy, 1773–1809, vol. I (Kingston-upon-Thames, 2013). See, for example, Jonathan, 28 July 1779, 337 and an unnamed ‘boy’, 26 April 1793, 384.
101 Ibid., 1, 29 June 1776 to 14 July 0183-7 passim, 2, 22 July 1787, 217. Sometimes inoculation was administered after someone had already (unknowingly) contracted smallpox. Inoculation could not then provide resistance.
102 John Trusler, The London adviser and guide (London, 1786), 50; Bird, The laws respecting masters and servants, 66–7; Henry George Watkins, Hints and observations addressed to heads of families in reference chiefly to female domestic servants (London, 1816), 51, 73.
103 Barbara Biddell, ‘The jolly farmer?’, Hampshire Papers 15 (1999), 15.
104 Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten children: parent–child relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge, 1983), 56–67.
105 Mrs Larpent’s diary, 1790–1795, 6 July 1792, 8 July 1792, 16 July 1792, Beaufort Papers, Huntington Library, HM31201, 64–5.
106 Beresford, Diary of a country parson, 13 January 1783, 14 August 1783, 195, 209.
107 Beresford, The diary of a country parson, vol. II 1782–1792 (Oxford, 1981), 9 August–6 October 1783, 85–96 gives a more detailed account of the illness at the parsonage.
108 Beresford, The diary of a country parson, 11 March 1791, 396.
109 Old Bailey proceedings online (hereafter, OBP) (www.oldbaileyonline.org. trial of Jacob Evans, 26 October 1826 (t18261026-215).
110 Committee minutes, 3 May 1775, LMA, A/FH/A/03/002/012; indenture for Samuel Adams’ reassignment 16 August 1775, LMA, A/FH/A12/004/081. Samuel was not a robust boy: an earlier attempt to place him with Admiral Pye failed because he proved too small to climb up behind the admiral’s carriage, 26 October 1774, LMA, A/FH/K02/001, 16.
111 Committee minutes, 19 October 1796, I February 1796, LMA, A/FH/A/02/018.
112 Committee minutes, 6 May 1795, LMA, A/FH/A/03/02/017.
113 Correspondence, Letter from Mrs Cole to the Hospital, n.d. but presumably within a few years of 1787 when Laetitia, aged 12, was apprenticed to the silk weaver George Cole, 18 February 1789, Correspondence, LMA, A/FH/A/12/023/001.
114 Correspondence, 10 March 1785, LMA, A/FH/A6/1/38/11/1-13. An unusual reassignment: the boy, Charles Bloxham, had been apprenticed in 1777, aged nine, to ‘learn the art and mistery’ of stationery, 9 December 1777, A/FH/A/12/004/082.
115 Correspondence, 11 May 1790, LMA, A/FH/A/12/4/851.
116 Committee minutes, 6 October 1790, LMA, A/FH/A003/002/016. An added complication was that British laws had no force in Jersey; they could not compel Fillieul to reimburse expenses. Balamane assumed that Fillieul was responsible for William’s maintenance and medical care.
117 Correspondence, 11 May 1790, LMA, A/FH/A12/4/851.
118 Committee minutes, 6 October 1790, LMA, A/FH/A/03/02/016.
119 Articles of agreement, 4 July 1792, LMA, A/FH/A/13/001.
120 Committee minutes, 10 September 1794, LMA, A/FH/A/03/02/017.
121 Blue Coat School Committee Book 1781–1795, 18 April 1785, for Charles Barton, 31 December 1787, 61, BCA, MS1622/1/1/1/4, 41.
122 Blue Coat School Committee Book, 22 November 1784, 35 BCA, MS1622/1/1/1/4.
123 Ibid., 1781–1795, 23 July 1786, 49, 5 June 1787, 11 June 1955, BCA, MS1622/1/1/1/4.
124 Ibid., 10 July 1787, 56, 31 December 1787, 61, 28 January 1788, 62, BCA, MS1622/1/1/1/4.
125 Ibid., 3 July 1787, 16 July 1956, 28 August 1787, 56, BCA, MS1622/1/1/1/4. The quarrel with the Bonds continued for some time. For the sequence of events, see 23 July 1786 to 28 January 1788, 49–62.
126 Mary Ashford, Life of a licensed victualler’s daughter, 26–8. When visiting relatives, Mary was ‘kept in the background because I was a servant’, 40.
127 Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker, first published 1771, equated with third edn, 1785 (London, 1961), 78–9.
128 The Somerset case of 1772 made the right to own a slave on English soil questionable. For a discussion of the complexities of the case, see Steedman, Labours lost, 126–7.
129 Honeyman, Child workers, 203–7; Pelling, ‘Child health and social cohesion’, 49.
130 Madge Dresser ed., The diary of Sarah Fox née Champion, Bristol 1745–1802, extracted in 1872 by John Frank (Bristol, 2003), March 1777, 51, January 1778, 56.
131 Thomas Bewick, The autobiography of Thomas Bewick, British Museum Manuscripts, Catalogue ADD, 41, 56, 481.
132 Richardson, Household servants, 230.
133 Honeyman, Child workers, 210–13.